[Courtesy of EOFlow]
SEOUL -- For improved dialysis therapy, the American subsidiary of EOFlow, a provider of wearable drug delivery solutions in South Korea, will go ahead with the development of an innovative wearable dialysis system, using MXenes, a two-dimensional material that showed a good performance in filtering urea.
MXenes, composed of titanium and carbon atoms, have been developed by Yury Gogotsi and Michel Barsoum at Drexel University, a private research university in Philadelphia. MXenes are known to show the best performance among known materials in filtering urea, the most difficult material to remove in dialysis.
EOFlow said its subsidiary, Nephria Bio, has signed a license agreement with Drexel University on the transfer of new MXene nanomaterial technology. As a result, Nephria secured exclusive rights to use MXenes for the development of a wearable dialysis system, known as the wearable artificial kidney.
"We will definitely do well in developing wearable artificial kidney, which has long been the ultimate goal of medicine," EOFlow CEO Jesse Kim said in a statement on April 29. Two technologies are essential to developing a wearable artificial kidney -- a small, light actuator with low power consumption and efficient material for urea filtration.
Nephria secured proprietary electroosmotic pump technology from EOFlow and filter technology from Drexel University. MXenes are biocompatible and can adsorb a variety of small molecules and hold a lot of promise in medical applications, Gogotsi said. "It is exciting to see it applied for improving and really changing dialysis -- an area of need in health care that can help millions of people."
The need for improvements in dialysis therapy is growing as there are no products such as the wearable artificial kidney commercially available yet. According to Fortune Business Insights, the global dialysis market is estimated to reach $177.6 billion by 2027 due to an increase in patients with hypertension and diabetes who eventually required dialysis therapy.
With the commercialization of a wearable and disposable insulin pump, EOFlow seeks to develop wearable drug delivery solutions in line with a trend of converting intravenous injection drugs to subcutaneous regimens that would empower users to administer drugs at home. EOFlow's product features a small and light design that drastically reduces size and weight, waterproof, the long-wear time to allow twice-a-week compliance and faster needle insertion for reduced insertion pain.
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